Someone was banging a metal cup against the bars of a cell, the clanging echoing through the building like a berserk, off-key bell. The sergeant appeared not to notice the racket.

“Indirectly. I’ve been trying to trace several families. What can you tell me about anyone by the name of Cook living in or around Lanark in 1916? Late summer, at a guess.”

“There’s a number of Cooks. Mostly from Loch Lomondside. Tell me what they’ve done and I’ll tell you what matches.”

“As far as I know, they’ve done nothing. We’re searching for a missing woman. She called herself Mary Cook. Or possibly even Maude Cook. There’s some indication she was in Lanark in 1916 for a period of several weeks. After that we seem to have lost track of her.”

The sergeant nodded. “Before the war I could have given you the history of nearly every family in Lanark, and a good bit of the countryside around it. It’s harder now. Even a small town like Lanark has seen its changes. But I don’t recall a woman by either name going missing. It was 1916, you said?” He gave the matter some thought. “An inheritance involved, is there?”

“Possibly. We won’t know until we find her.”

“My guess is, there’s nothing here for you. Unless someone reported her missing, we’d have no record of her.”

A constable came in from his rounds, nodded to the sergeant, and went through a door on the far left.

“Still, if you come back in the morning, I’ll have it nailed down. I wouldn’t raise my hopes too high if I were you—but I’ll look into it.”

“Fair enough.” Rutledge took out a card and wrote the number of The Ballantyne Hotel on it. “You can find me there tomorrow night. I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”

The sergeant grinned. “Duncarrick? That’s Inspector Oliver’s turf. Good man, Oliver. I worked with him on a case in 1912. A series of murders that were never solved. Took it hard, he did.”

“In Lanark?”

“No, Duncarrick. Five women found with their throats cut. There was a scrap of paper pinned to each of the corpses. Right over their breasts. Called them whores. Harlots. They weren’t, of course, just young, pretty in a way. Lively. Working-class women. The bodies were found over a matter of months, but always on the same day of the month. Odd business. Had Duncarrick in a sweat, I can tell you! But the killer must have moved on. We never caught him.”

“What was the reaction of the public to the accusations on those pieces of paper?”

“What you’d expect—where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire. Unfair, but the belief was that such things didn’t happen to nice women.”

Rutledge said, “Can you recall any other details?”